


Hard to Love

by Gruoch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bickering, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mother-Son Relationship, Protective May Parker (Spider-Man), Tony Stark Has A Heart, and a well-intentioned disregard for boundaries, begrudging co-parenting, legal/illegal drug use, lonely people seeking love & support, platonic co-parenting, platonic marriage really, she does not tolerate nonsense, wannabe Irondad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 03:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17337668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gruoch/pseuds/Gruoch
Summary: If someone had told May that Iron Man himself would one day occasionally show up uninvited to her quiet little apartment and intrude into her quiet little life, she would have laughed them out of the room. But then her life seems chock-full of unpleasant surprises these days.Or, Tony Stark wants a bigger piece of the pie. May Parker learns to accept help. Peter just wants to keep the peace.





	Hard to Love

It’s dark and quiet in the bedroom when something jolts May out of sleep. She lies there for a minute, blinking away the lingering grogginess clouding her head, and tries to pinpoint whatever it was that has interrupted her sleep. The window is cracked open a few inches, letting in an unseasonably warm, humid breeze that does little to cool the room, and at first she thinks something outside must have awoken her. She’s just about to slip back to sleep when she hears it—a faint, rhythmic shuffling noise from somewhere down the hall.

She throws back the sheet and swings her legs over the side of the bed, wincing at little at the ache in her lower back that flares up the second she stands. Then she wanders out of the room and down the hall, wrapping her arms around herself as if she is chilled, even though the inside of the apartment is warm and stuffy. There’s a little coil of fear unfurling in her belly, a familiar, gnawing dread that she feels whenever she’s awoken abruptly from sleep. It started the night that Ben died, when she had been woken up by a call from the hospital. And then it worsened after discovering her nephew was moonlighting as a masked vigilante, growing into something monstrous in the pit of her stomach.

The noise grows louder as she approaches the living room. She stands at the end of the hall and squints into the darkened room, her eye drawn quickly to movement near one of the windows.

“Peter?” she calls softly.

He’s on his hands and knees under the window, still dressed in the Spider-Man suit from the neck down, scrubbing at a large dark spot on the carpet with a dish towel. He looks up at May and even in the dark she can make out the guilty expression on his face.

“Where’s the blood coming from?” she asks with a sigh, because she lives in a world now where late night dark stains on the carpet are no longer the result of spilled cocoa or soda.

“Just a nosebleed,” Peter assures her quickly, sitting back on his heels and twisting the towel around his hands. “I’m fine.” He catches his lower lip under his teeth for a moment, and he looks so young that it makes May's chest hurt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I was trying to be quiet.”

“That’s alright, sweetheart.” May crosses the living room, stopping to turn a lamp on before going to him. She kneels down and gently takes his face in her hands. “Let me see.”

She examines his pupils and carefully presses the pads of her thumbs down the bridge of his nose, finding no breaks. There’s a little dried blood crusted around his nostrils and the bow of his lip, but for once it does seem to be nothing, in fact, but a minor nosebleed. It’s on the tip of her tongue to ask him what happened but she retreats from the question, the reality too fearful to consider. She exists now in a strange, uneasy place between acceptance and denial, where the former is only possible because of the latter, where she can make a shaky sort of peace with the reality of the way things are now only so long as she remains willfully ignorant of all the gory, terrifying details. It’s cowardly, she knows, but most days it’s the only thing tethering her to sanity.

“Get out of that suit and go to bed,” she says, kissing his temple and taking the towel from his hands. “You have school tomorrow. I’ll clean this up.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again, leaning forward to hug her.

“I’m just glad you’re home, bug,” May says, squeezing him hard, wishing she could hold him here safe in her arms forever. 

May blots at the stain after Peter has gone to bed, but by that point it’s stubbornly set in, and despite her best efforts a faint reddish-brown ring remains locked in the fibers. She’ll have to find a rug or something to hide it under, and she can’t help but muse with a touch of bitterness over how perfectly that sums up her life these days.

__________________________

 

Mornings with a teenager during the school year are always hectic, even on her day off, it seems. Mornings with a teenager who stays out late fighting crime on school nights and then oversleeps are even more so.

“Please eat some real breakfast, Peter,” May begs from where she sits in her pajamas and robe at the kitchen table. “I can make you some eggs.”

Peter is like a tiny tornado, zipping around the kitchen and leaving chaos in his wake as he scrambles to get ready for school. This, at least, remains the same as before.

“No time, I’m already late,” he says as he pours cereal from the box directly into his mouth. “I’m gonna miss my train if I don’t leave like right this very second.”

“I can drive you today,” May offers. “Let me just throw some clothes on real quick.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Peter says around another mouthful of dry cereal. “If I miss the train I can always—” he makes a motion with his arm like he’s firing off a web—“you know, swing my way there.”

“Peter Benjamin Parker, don’t you dare,” May says firmly. “There is no…no _Spider-Man-ing_ before three P.M. on school days. You know that.”

“Oh, come on, that doesn’t really count.”

May glares at Peter and he wilts immediately, holding up a hand in a placating gesture while scooping up his backpack with the other. 

“Alright, alright, I won’t, I promise.” He leans over and kisses her cheek. “Bye, May. Love you!”

“Love you, too,” she calls after him as he sprints out the door. “Have a good day, sweetheart!”

He’s not gone fifteen minutes when there’s a knock at the door. 

“Oh, Peter,” May sighs to herself, assuming he’s missed the train and is slinking back to get that car ride she had offered. The knock comes again, more insistently, and she grumbles a little under her breath as she shuffles over to the door in her slippers.

“Did you forget your key again?” she asks as she opens the door before realizing it isn’t Peter on the other side. 

“Oh, no,” she says darkly when she sees who is standing at the threshold. “It is too damn early for this.”

“And a very good morning to you, too, May,” Tony Stark replies, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind violet-shaded glasses as he smiles at her. “You’re looking…comfortable.”

May pulls her robe closed and savagely knots the sash, huffing at him. “It’s my day off. You know, the _one_ day a week I get to relax a little.”

“I know it is,” Tony replies.

May squints up at him. “Oh, god, please tell me you don’t have my work schedule saved somewhere.”

“I don’t have it saved somewhere,” Tony says. “I have it memorized.”

May resists the urge to yank her hair out. “Do you even have any clue how weird and invasive that is?”

“It’s not _weird_ ,” Tony says, having the gall to look affronted. “It’s a safety precaution. And in my defense, it’s not like I intentionally memorized it. It’s just how my brain works.”

May rolls her eyes and folds her arms across her chest. “Yes, we all know what a wonderful genius you are.”

Tony leans against the doorframe and flashes another smile at her. “Do you have any idea how stunning you are when you get all snippy like that?”

“Goodbye, Tony,” May says, shutting the door on him.

“Kidding!” he calls, bracing an arm against the door to keep it from slamming shut. “I’m kidding! Lord, you have no sense of humor in the morning, May.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” May says as she reluctantly opens the door again. 

“Your kid said the same thing to me last week,” Tony says. “Little twerp said my jokes are _corny_ , can you believe the disrespect? There’s an art to a good pun that he’s just too uncultured to understand.”

May rolls her eyes again. “For god’s sake, just tell me what you want. I have things I want to get done today. _Important_ things.”

“I just wanted to pop in very quickly to discuss something, if that’s alright,” Tony says, having the good grace to at least fake being chastened.

“Peter just left,” May tells him, eager to end this encounter.

“I know.”

“Let me guess—you have his schedule memorized, too,” May says. One look at the vaguely guilty expression on Tony’s face confirms the suspicion. She presses her hands against her temples and groans. “You are such a _creep_.”

“But I’m not here to see Peter,” Tony continues, ignoring her interjection. “I’m here to talk to you.”

She grimaces, because she can’t imagine that anything he has to say could be any good if it required him to make a trip out to Queens instead of just calling her. But she grudgingly opens the door wider. She has learned by now that the quickest way to get rid of the man is to let him do whatever he wants. “Come in, then, and get it over with.”

She ushers him into the living room and then goes to put on another pot of coffee, swallowing down a sigh. If someone had told May that Iron Man himself would one day occasionally show up uninvited to her quiet little apartment and intrude into her quiet little life, she would have laughed them out of the room. But then her life seems chock-full of unpleasant surprises these days.

Tony is toeing at the bloodstain on the carpet with a leather shoe that probably costs more than her car when she brings two mugs of coffee to the living room.

“This looks alarmingly fresh,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her. “Tell me that dumb kid didn’t come home bleeding last night.”

“I thought that suit is supposed to alert you to that kind of thing,” May says as she sits down on the sofa.

“It is, and yet—” Tony gestures to the stain with a sour look on his face, as if it has personally insulted him.

“It was just a nosebleed,” May dismisses. “Your multi-million dollar invention isn’t malfunctioning, so don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about, and you know it,” he sniffs, coming to sit beside her.

“Alright,” she says, and she does know it—she’s just not quite sure how she feels about it.

She holds out one of the mugs to him, the nicer one that isn’t chipped to hell around the rim because her mother was an old school Italian woman who raised her on the strict rule that you are always hospitable even if the guest you’re entertaining is the devil himself. 

He looks older in person than he does on TV, she thinks, tired and more worn around the eyes and mouth. His hand trembles just slightly when he accepts the mug of coffee from her, and she wonders, not for the first time, if he’s an alcoholic or if it’s something else. She’s suddenly embarrassed by how little she knows about this man who spends so much time with her kid. It drives her crazy, the way he can maintain an impersonal distance while simultaneously barging across every boundary of their own privacy.

He’d come to her home with a black eye that first time, she remembers, and he’d explained it away with some flippant joke. She hadn’t thought anything then of the dangerous world he inhabits. He’d come in his expensive clothes and his expensive cologne, all suave charm, speaking of scholarships and grant money and internships, and she’d allowed herself to be swept up in it, ecstatic with the thought of something _good_ happening for Peter after all the heartache they’d been through. God knows he deserved it. She’d been so desperate for some sign that the universe was turning in their favor that she’d barely batted an eye when Tony Stark, *the* fabulously rich, fabulously famous Tony Stark, had told her he was going to take Peter to an internship retreat that very weekend. She’d signed the paperwork his assistant had sent over that afternoon giving her consent without really reading any of it.

She’d been so angry when she’d learned the truth months later, when she’d found Peter in the suit and he’d broken down and confessed to everything. She’d been angry at Tony for lying to her and endangering her kid like that, angry with Peter for lying and protecting him. But mostly angry with herself for being such a fool. She’d known something was going on—knew Peter was sneaking out, knew his grades were suffering, knew he was hiding things from her. She’d seen the fatigue written in every line of his body and the strange bruises he sometimes came home with, and she hadn’t done enough to reach out to him. She’d been too wrapped up in Ben’s loss, too ready to accept the excuse that all this was just Peter’s way of processing his own grief.

She’s still angry, but there’s another part of her, a shameful part, that feels relief that this man has stepped into their lives the way he has. It had been overwhelming enough with Ben’s sudden death and trying to raise a teenager on her own without also discovering that her fifteen-year-old child was swinging around Queens fighting crime in a ridiculous red-and-blue costume. She had enough weight on her shoulders already without Spider-Man, so it has been a kind of blessing, being able to pass a sliver of that burden off onto someone else.

But that doesn’t mean she has to like him.

Tony clears his throat. “I was gonna talk to you about Peter coming upstate again with me this weekend, but he already said he can’t. Said he had something else going on.”

May looks at him and deciphers the unspoken question in his words. 

“I didn’t tell him he couldn’t, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she says, a touch annoyed that she feels she has to defend herself. But then she catches the flash of relief that skirts across his face before his expression settles once more into the cool detachment that seems to be his default setting. Something in her grudgingly softens a bit towards him.

“He’s staying the night at his friend’s house,” she explains. “It’s her birthday.”

“You let him spend the night at girls’ houses?” Tony replies, raising an eyebrow. “Very progressive of you. I like this free-spirited, hip aunt thing you got going on.”

“I let him stay at his friend Michelle’s house,” May corrects, ignoring the last part of his statement. “Peter’s scared of her.”

Tony snorts into his coffee. “And yet he considers her a friend because…?”

“I don’t think she gave him much of a choice, honestly,” May says, unable to help smiling a little. “She’s…a very strong character. Smart girl. I like her.”

“Sure, you do,” Tony says, smiling back knowingly. “Strong, smart, scary—she sounds like you.”

May doesn’t feel she’s any of those things these days. She’s feels like she’s barely holding it together. What she does feel good at is pretending to be strong, pretending to know what she’s doing. She can’t afford to fall apart because she’s all Peter has left, so she won’t. 

“Can we cut to the chase here,” she says.

“Of course,” Tony replies, putting his mug down on the coffee table and once again settling into that cool professionalism with practiced ease, like he’s about to pitch her a new product line or something. “I want to offer Peter an internship this summer. A real one, I mean. I’ll get him a spot with our R&D group. He’ll get all kinds of hands on experience. It’ll look great on his college applications.”

May purses her lips and gives him a skeptical look. “Last time you came here talking about internships you lied to me and took my kid to Germany and let Captain America kick the shit outta him.”

Tony winces. “It was more of a mutual shit kicking, to be fair. Peter did really, exceptionally well considering...” 

He trails off when he sees the deadly glare she’s giving him. “But yeah, not one of my better decisions, I can admit that. I was a little desperate at the time and maybe wasn’t really thinking things through.” He grimaces, twisting his watch around his wrist. “Listen, I know I’m not... _good_ at this, but I’m serious about this internship. Peter is a good kid and he’s smart as hell, and he deserves the best future he can get. I just want to help make that happen for him.”

May knows that he’s being sincere. Keeping Peter happy and healthy and safe is the one thing they wholeheartedly agree on, although they often differ wildly in their opinion of the best ways to achieve that goal.

“Okay,” May says cautiously. “How does this work?” 

Tony’s posture relaxes a little. He settles back into the cushions. “He comes in three days a week. Happy can pick him up and drop him back off, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Two days,” May counters, “and I get to choose which ones. I want him home on my days off or I’ll never see him.”

“Alright. Two days a week. But he still comes up one weekend a month to work on his… _other_ internship,” Tony counters back, his jaw set in a way that May has learned to recognize as a sign that he’s not going to back down.

“Ugh, god,” she says, exasperated. “Why do I feel like a divorcée fighting over child custody right now? I should _not_ feel like this.” 

Tony gives her a shit-eating grin, the professional facade gone. “Hey, think of it this way—the more time he spends on this internship, the less time he’s out there endangering his life on the streets. It’s a win-win situation for all of us.”

“Ugh,” May says again, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fine.”

“I knew you’d be agreeable, May,” Tony says in that smug, self-satisfied manner he so often exudes. “You always come around eventually.”

May very heroically resists the urge to pour her hot coffee in his lap. 

__________________________

 

The next two months pass by quickly and then summer is in full swing. A heatwave blisters the city and must be boiling people’s brains, too, because there is a sudden, rapid increase in the number of violent crimes and bizarre shenanigans in the neighborhood. 

May knows Peter is tangled up in all of it despite keeping busy with his summer internship. He comes home with bruises and split lips and once a deep cut over his hip that he swears was given to him by a crazed man wielding a broadsword and attacking bocce ball players in Kissena Park. She stitches him up and then takes the suit away for the rest of the weekend because that’s just a hair too fucked up for her to handle, and she needs to take a break from the constant worry hanging like a storm cloud over her head.

She resolutely avoids watching any of the local news stations in case Spider-Man shows up on screen in some harrowing situation that will fry her last nerve. She works double shifts tending to elderly heatstroke victims and dehydrated joggers to keep herself too busy to worry. She tunes out the chatter at the nurses station about how Spider-Man stopped so-and-so’s auntie from being mugged or rescued their neighbor from a car crash . She knows she should be proud—and she is, god, she is so very proud—but sometimes she’s terrified too and there is no one close to her that she can share that fear with. She can’t even talk to Peter about it, because the guilt on his face whenever the subject is even lightly skirted upon destroys her, so she says nothing. She retreats from it all instead, shoves all her worries and fears into an imaginary closet at the back of her mind and pretends that the door isn’t threatening to burst off its hinges at any moment.

But you can’t run forever from something you’re tied so tightly to. 

On a sweltering Thursday night she treats a little girl who had been pulled from an apartment building that had been completely gutted by a terrible fire that had burned out of control all morning. The girl escaped with only a few minor scrapes and burns and a moderate case of smoke inhalation—an honest to god miracle, the firefighters had said. The entire building collapsed around her like a fiery tomb and somehow she made it out with barely a scratch. 

“Twenty-odd years doing this and never seen nothing like it,” one of the firefighters tells the nurses, who have gathered around to watch footage of the blaze on one of the computers at the nurses station. Even May joins in, swallowing down that little coil of dread that twists in the pit of her stomach. It relaxes a little when she doesn’t spot a red-and-blue clad figure among the awful, all-consuming flames in any of the videos they watch.

The firefighters come to visit the little girl, the more pious or superstitious among them touching her tiny foot under the blanket like she’s some sort of living talisman. May doesn’t really believe in things like that any more but she’s already grown fond of her little patient. The girl has been wheezing quietly in her hospital bed for a few hours now, almost beatifically calm and pleasant the entire time.

“You’re doing so well, honey,” May praises her, leaning over her little form to adjust the oxygen mask on the girl’s face. “You are being so brave. I know this has all been very scary but you are such a brave girl.”

The girl turns her head towards May, a smile lighting up her whole face. “I wasn’t scared,” she whispers in her tiny smoke-wrecked voice. It’s the first words she’s managed to utter since being brought to the hospital. “Spider-Man saved me.”

May is too stunned to say anything for a long time after that. She finishes up the rest of her shift in a kind of daze. She calls Peter as soon as she clocks out, her hands shaking so badly she nearly drops her phone, and she has to fight back tears when the call goes to voicemail. She gets into her car and practically flies home, the old engine protesting the heat and the abuse by squealing noisily every time her foot presses the gas pedal.

She finds Peter dead asleep on the sofa when she gets home, the TV playing some cooking show at low volume, the screen casting a flickering, shifting light over the dark room. His arms are crossed over his stomach, his hands clumsily wrapped in gauze bandages. Her heart breaks a little at the sight. 

Her handbag slips off her sagging shoulder and drops with a heavy thud on the floor. Peter stirs at the sound and blinks groggily at her, and something dreadful must be showing on her face because he bolts upright, his eyes gone wide and worried. He looks from her to his bandaged hands and back again, his expression fracturing with guilt.

“May, I can explain—” he starts, but the rest of his excuse is muffled against her shoulder and she is squeezing him so tightly around the neck that he probably can’t breathe. She can smell smoke in his hair and the acrid odor of burnt synthetic fiber. She wants to scream at him, she wants to take his suit and stuff it down the garbage disposal, she wants to ground him for the rest of his life. She wants to go back to a time when she didn’t have to feel this way.

But she can’t do any of that.

“I saw the fire on the news,” she says, her voice shaking. “I treated that little girl. I just—I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?”

He gently disentangles himself from her vice-like grip and gazes up at her with soft, shining eyes.

“Yes,” he says, but she notices the second of hesitancy before he says it, hears the doubt in his voice. And oh, that crushes her. He’s been running into burning buildings while she’s been closing her eyes. The shame of it curls in her chest, hot and sickly.

“I’m gonna do better, baby, I promise,” May says, running her fingers through his tangled, sooty curls. “It scares me, that’s all. I get so scared.”

“It scares me, too, sometimes,” Peter admits. He takes a shaky breath and his expression becomes determined. “But if I hadn’t been there—that girl would have died. She would have _died_. So I _have_ to do this, May. I have to.”

“I know,” May says, even though it breaks her heart that he feels that way. “I just don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I’ll be more careful,” he says. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine. Nothing’s gonna happen to me, I promise.”

“My baby bug,” May says, holding his face in her hands and fighting back tears again. He makes her that impossible promise so earnestly, a child’s wish. And she’ll pretend to believe it for him.

“Let me see your hands,” she says gently, determined to hold it together.

He holds them up for her inspection. She carefully unwraps them, biting her lip every time he winces. 

“Oh, honey,” she murmurs when she finally uncovers his blistered, reddened palms. 

“They’ll be nearly healed by morning,” Peter quickly assures her. “You won’t even be able to tell anything happened.”

She kisses the crown of his head. “It doesn’t make it any easier for me. You’ll understand when you have kids of your own someday.” And _god_ , she prays, _let him live long enough for that to happen_. “I’d wrap you up in bubble-wrap if I could.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, chewing his lip anxiously. 

“If I had a nickel for every time you said that to me, I’d be as rich as your pal Tony Stark,” May tells him, pinching his chin. 

“You’re not mad?” Peter asks hesitantly.

“No,” May lies, winding the gauze back around his hands. 

She spares Peter the true depths of her fear and anger, reserving it all for Tony instead. After Peter goes to bed, she heads down to her car and locks herself inside, so that she can be sure Peter won’t hear her when she calls Tony to demand how a genius like him can’t even make a suit that won’t melt against her child’s skin while he’s rescuing little girls from house fires. She’ll berate him because she needs to know how this could have happened, needs to know that it _absolutely won’t ever happen again_. 

“The science isn’t perfect, May,” Tony tells her patiently, though she knows him well enough at this point that she can tell he is just as perturbed as she is, and as much as she dislikes him she takes comfort in that. “I’ve run test after test but there’s always a margin for failure when you move from the lab to real world conditions. I’ll fix it—I’ll fix this, May, I promise. I’m in the city this weekend—have him come over to my place with the suit tomorrow. I’ll send Happy to get him. Don’t let him ride the subway with those burns, for god’s sake, he’ll get sepsis or gangrene or something. It’s gotta be like the fetid pits of hell down there right now—” 

May ends the call. As if Tony Stark has any fucking clue what it’s like. It’s got to be some kind of cosmic joke, she thinks, that he’s the one person in the whole entire universe she can be completely honest with.

 

__________________________

 

The rest of summer bleeds away slowly. The heat fades and the new school year begins. The mornings get chaotic again, but the start of school means Peter is spending less time patrolling and May feels some of the tightness in her chest ease off a bit—at least until he gets his driver’s license and starts driving on his own, introducing an entirely new thing for her to worry over. This, however, is at least an anxiety she can share with other mothers of teenagers. She’s carried the secret fear in her heart for so long that the relief that comes with openly fretting alongside Ned’s mother as they watch their kids drive off together is nearly euphoric. There are days when she misses the banality of her old life nearly as much as she misses Ben.

Then she blinks and suddenly it’s November. As the leaves change and the weather grows colder, May feels that familiar dread start to twist in the pit of her stomach at the prospect of facing the holidays again without Ben. She had hoped this year would be easier than the last, but she wakes up feeling sick and lightheaded in the chilly mornings, and she avoids the topic of holiday plans when it comes up among her coworkers.

But she’s ferociously determined to make the holidays as normal and joyful an affair as possible for Peter, which is why she very nearly bursts into tears when her oven decides to quit working right as she’s getting ready to put the Thanksgiving turkey in it. She keeps it together long enough to call her landlord and then nearly cries again when the phone rings and rings endlessly. She drinks a couple glasses of wine and curses out the oven instead, not even caring if her neighbors hear her. 

She’s pulling out menus for Thai takeout when there’s a knock at the door. She practically jogs over, praying that it’s her landlord, but when she opens the door Tony Stark is standing on the other side like some kind of guardian angel mechanic. She doesn’t waste a second.

“Oh, thank god you’re here,” May says, grabbing his arm and pulling him inside. If she wasn’t so stressed she would have appreciated the look of astonished disbelief on his face.

“Have you been drugged?” Tony asks, taking her by the shoulders and bending over to peer into her eyes. “Is this a body snatchers situation?”

“No, it’s a ‘my oven is broken and I need to put a turkey in it right-the-fuck-now’ situation,” May says, shrugging out of his grasp. “I need you to fix it before I ruin Thanksgiving dinner again.”

“You are aware that Thanksgiving is still almost a week away, right?” Tony says as he follows her into the kitchen. He sets down the paper bag he’s carrying on the table and takes off his suit jacket, tossing it carelessly onto the sofa in the living room.

“Yes, but I’ve agreed to work a shift for a friend on Thanksgiving. I owed her one and I really couldn’t say no to having a little extra money in my pocket this time of year, so we’re doing Thanksgiving today.” May waves an arm at the malfunctioning oven. “Of course, this old piece of crap _would_ die on me right when I need it the most.”

“I don’t blame it for giving up the ghost if that’s how you talk to it,” Tony says as rolls up his sleeves before dragging the oven away from the wall. “Your kid-genius can’t fix this for you?”

“He’s at a movie with his friends actually being a teenager for once, so I’m not gonna bother him.”

“Well, I guess it’s kismet I came, then,” Tony says, squinting at the backside of the oven. “Gotta flashlight and a screwdriver?”

“Look at that,” he says a short while later, once the turkey is nestled away in a working oven. “Obnoxious billionaire narcissist with a heart of gold saves Thanksgiving for attractive widowed parent and her endearingly precocious child. This could be a Hallmark movie.” He gives her a sly smile. “We’d get hitched at the end.”

“Well, good thing this isn’t a movie, then,” May says. “The sequel would be one of those Lifetime true crime documentaries. ‘Woman snaps and murders husband.’ I’d smother you to death under your own giant ego.”

“That’s exactly how I’ve always wanted to go,” Tony says, still grinning as he wipes his hands on a dish towel. “And you’re very welcome, May. I’m always glad to help you out.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” May says, putting her hand on her hip. Then, more gently, “I know we don’t always get along, but I’m grateful for what you do.”

“Wow, Satan’s building a snowman in hell. Can you say that again so I can get it on video?” Tony teases, but there’s something soft and pleased in his expression, and it’s that expression that makes May hold back the sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue.

“I hope I haven’t made you late for anything,” she says instead, feeling suddenly awkward.

He waves a hand dismissively. “Nah, I’m just headed out for a sort of working vacation in California for the rest of the year. Can’t be late if you own the company.”

“Sounds nice,” May offers.

Tony shrugs, a slight grimace on his face. “Depends on the work-to-vacation ratio, I suppose. I’m never one-hundred-percent sure what Pepper has planned.” He gives May a rueful smile. “The ladies in my life like to keep me on my toes.”

“And you deserve every bit of grief we give you,” May replies, tilting her chin up.

Tony grins at her. “You’re absolutely right, of course. I’m constantly in awe of my good fortune in having not one but two brilliant, beautiful women around to beat sense into me.”

“Very fortunate,” May says, rolling her eyes. But she’s smiling, to her own surprise. “You want to stay and have a glass of wine?” she finds herself asking.

The pleased look on Tony’s face returns. “Sure, if I won’t be in your way.”

“Not at all. I prepared everything else last night or this morning. I’m just waiting on the turkey now.” She gets a bottle and a couple of glasses and leads him to the living room.

“What do we have here?” Tony asks as he sits down on the sofa, gesturing to a box of photographs sitting on the coffee table. “Scrapbooking?”

“I’m trying to find a picture for our Christmas cards,” May says, handing him a glass. “I’m hoping if I just pick out an old picture instead of trying to wrangle Peter to take a new one, I might actually get them out on time this year.”

She doesn’t mention the other reason, the terrible ache that she feels at the thought of taking a picture for Christmas that doesn’t include Ben. Last year she hadn’t even been able to stomach sending out cards at all. She still wishes she could simply fast-forward through the holidays and all their heartache. It’s an exhausting affair, she and Peter both pretending to be happy for each other’s sake, because talking about their grief outright still feels too fresh and painful.

“Well, that’s easy. Use this one right here,” Tony says, plucking a picture out of the box and showing it to her. It’s a picture of Peter from a year or so after he had come to live with her and Ben. He’s standing in front of the Christmas tree, dressed in Iron Man pajamas and wearing a plastic Iron Man mask. 

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” May says with a brittle smile.

“You sure? It’s pretty damn adorable,” Tony says, looking at the picture. “You mind if I borrow this?”

“Only if you promise not to embarrass Peter with it,” May replies, sipping her wine.

“Oh, come on. A little benign teasing builds character.”

“Tony, leave him alone or so help me,” May warns, jabbing him in the chest with a finger. 

Tony makes a face. “Alright, alright, at ease, she-wolf.” He tucks the picture into a pocket on the inside of his suit jacket and then reaches for another picture in the box. “Are these his parents?”

May leans over against his shoulder and looks at the picture in his hand, one of her and Ben standing with their arms around Peter’s parents, all four of them beaming at the camera. “Yeah, Mary and Richard.”

“Peter looks _exactly_ like his mom,” Tony muses. “Except the ears—those are dad’s.”

May laughs a little. “Richard’s childhood nickname was ‘Dumbo.’ Isn’t that awful? Fortunately, Peter inherited his brains, too, and Mary’s. They were both brilliant. Ben couldn’t be more different from his brother. We could barely keep up with them.”

“Yeah, I have a big green friend who raves endlessly about their work on genetic mutation and genome editing. I’m hoping I can introduce him to Peter one day, if he ever turns up again.”

“If you’re referring to Dr. Banner, then be prepared for Peter to die of sheer happiness,” May says, smiling. “He’s his biggest fan.”

“I know,” Tony says, looking slightly chagrined. “Makes me jealous as hell. After all I’ve done for that kid, I still play second fiddle to the great Bruce Banner. Hard to compete with a guy who has seven PhDs and can singlehandedly tear apart an entire city.”

“Oh, please,” May says. “Peter worships the ground you walk on.” 

She looks at the picture again, sobering. “It’s so sad, how things turned out. Look how happy we all were. We had no idea what was coming. And here I am, the last one standing. The lone survivor,” she sighs. “It’s not a very good feeling."

“I can imagine,” Tony says.

May shakes her head, sitting upright. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all maudlin. It’s the wine and—” she has to stop a moment to collect herself—“you know, the holidays aren’t so easy for us.”

“That’s alright,” Tony says, putting the picture back in the box. “I get it. You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

There’s something about the way he says it, something so gentle and so unlike his usual cocky indifference that it disarms her. She can feel tears burning in her eyes and a painful tightness in her throat, but before she can embarrass herself by coming completely undone in front of him, the door opens and Peter comes bounding through in his usual graceless manner.

“Hey, May!” he calls, tossing his keys carelessly onto the counter. “Oh my god, that smells so good, is that pumpkin pie—oh, hey, Mr. Stark.”

“Hey, kid,” Tony says with a lazy grin, clearly enjoying getting to surprise Peter at home like this. “How was the movie?’

“Oh, uh, it was good.” Peter is looking from Tony to May and back again with a hint of trepidation, as if he’s expecting to get in trouble for something. “So, um, what brings you over here?” 

“Your aunt had an oven emergency. And I brought you something.” Tony points to the bag on the kitchen table. “A very early Christmas present.”

May purses her lips at that. “Tony...” she says unhappily. It had been one of her first rules, forbidding him from buying Peter anything unless it was for school or his so-called internship.

Tony looks over at her. “It’s for school, for his upcoming robotics competition,” he clarifies. “Come on, May, I’m not breaking any rules—I’m just exploiting a loophole you left open.” He looks back at Peter, who is watching their exchange with wary eyes. Tony motions to him. “Go on, kid, open it up. If I wasn’t hoping to get a chance to watch you open it I would have sent Happy instead of coming out here myself. Open it.”

Peter hesitates, glancing over at May. She grudgingly nods her head.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Peter says, opening up the bag and gaping at whatever is inside. “Is this a Fujikawa optical sensor?”

“Sure is,” Tony says, grinning at Peter’s awestruck reaction. “Latest 3D stereo tech. Not even available on the market yet. It’ll give you a nice leg up on the competition.”

“Holy shit,” Peter says again. “Mr. Stark, this is—this is _amazing_. I can’t even believe this. Thank you so much.” 

“You’re very welcome.” Tony says, before shifting into something slightly more stern. “Now, this feels a little like dangling candy in front of a baby, but I’m not above bribery, so—if you toe the line while I’m gone, and listen to Happy and your aunt, and resist committing any dumbass acts of teenage rebellion-slash-foolhardy heroics, there will be many more happy surprises like that upon my return. You think you can do that?”

“Yes, sir, absolutely,” Peter promises, his attempt at solemnity somewhat diminished by the excitement lighting up his face. He turns to May, his eyes pleading. “Can I take this over to Ned’s and show him? Pleaaaaaase?” 

“No way,” May says firmly. “I’ve been busting my butt all day to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner and you wanna split the second you’re home? I don’t think so.”

“I can be back in an hour,” Peter begs. “The turkey isn’t even close to being done yet. Please, May, come on. Ned will _flip_.”

May purses her lips and then sighs, defeated. “One hour. You show that…whatever it is to Ned and then you come straight home.” 

Peter looks like he might vibrate apart from excitement. “One hour, I promise. Thanks again, Mr. Stark, you’re the best!”

“Yeah, don’t you forget it,” Tony says, looking extremely pleased with himself.

“Take a jacket!” May reminds Peter as he bolts for the door. 

“You think that’s fair to the other kids?” she asks Tony when they’re alone again.

Tony shrugs. “He still has to put it all together. I just gave him one little piece.” He looks over at her and takes in her sour expression. “Come on, May. You saw how excited he was. You don’t think he deserves that?”

“Of course I do—"

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’s...” May flounders for a moment, flustered. “It’s exploitative.”

Tony drops his head against the back of the couch and rolls his eyes at the ceiling. “It’s just a little incentive to get him to stick with his extracurriculars. I thought you’d be glad I’m pushing him so hard on the academic front. He needs to start thinking about college. Don’t you agree?”

“I do, it’s just...” May trails off, unable to think of any real objection. She exhales sharply in long-suffering frustration, not sure why she even bothers trying to argue with him.

“So if that’s settled,” Tony says, “why don’t you tell me what _you_ would like for Christmas.”

May scoffs into her wine glass. “Oh, god, don’t you dare.”

“What?” Tony says, flashing her a grin. “I can’t get something for my baby mama?”

“If you ever call me that again, I’ll carve you up like a turkey,” May replies, returning his smile with an icy one of her own. 

“Noted. Now play along. Pretend I’m Santa.” Tony pats his knee. “Have a seat here and tell me what’s on your wishlist.”

“Okay. I wish you’d cease any and all contact with Peter,” May tries, already knowing what he’ll say to that.

Tony scrunches his nose up. “Mmm, yeah, I’m pretty sure breaking Santa’s heart gets you immediately put on the naughty list. We don’t want that. Try again. Let’s aim for realistic this time. I’m more of a sleazy mall Santa rather than a _Miracle on 34th Street_ Santa. There’s gotta be something you’re pining for. Vacation in Italy? New car? Check for a million bucks?”

May smiles tightly and looks down at her hand in her lap, twisting her wedding band around her finger. “Honestly? I just want to get it over with quickly.”

“Christ, May, you’re killing me,” Tony complains. “Where’s your holiday spirit?”

“I’m certainly not gonna waste it on you,” May replies. “I’ve got to save it all up for Peter. There’s not much to spare these days.”

Something in Tony’s demeanor softens. “You know if you ever need help, you can call me. You don’t have to do it all alone.”

May shakes her head. “I appreciate that, but I don’t want to be your charity case or whatever.”

“This isn't charity,” Tony insists. “If anyone is benefiting from this relationship, it’s me. This is just me offering to take a little bit of the weight off your shoulders—that’s all. God knows you’re carrying enough. So let me help, alright?”

May feels suddenly close to tears again. She thinks of the months and months of fear and grief and loneliness she has endured, of the permanent sense that the world she had once thought of as firm and constant could at any moment crumble under her feet in an instant, without warning, and leave her truly bereft of everything precious to her. And what she wants, more than anything, is to not feel like she’s facing that terrifyingly unpredictable world alone.

“Okay,” she agrees, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Alright.”

“Thank you,” Tony says, his eyes gone dark and serious. “It means a lot to me, that you’re letting me have this.”

May nods, not entirely trusting herself to speak. She still feels right on the razor-thin edge of holding it together or completely falling apart. She takes another deep breath, gathering her fraying edges.

“You want to stay and eat dinner with us?” she asks, trying to return the mood between them to something more normal. “I swear my pumpkin pie tastes better than it looks.”

Tony, to her relief, catches his cue and plays along. “Is that you or the wine asking?” 

“It’s the spirit of Thanksgiving speaking through me,” May says. “I’m trying to show my gratitude to you for fixing my oven. For everything.”

“I appreciate that, but I really should be going,” Tony says, getting to his feet. “I don’t wanna intrude on any beloved family holiday traditions.”

“That’s very funny coming from a man who once followed me into a bathroom during an argument,” May says dryly. “Good to know we have one sacred space left.”

“I’m a very generous man, May,” Tony says with a return to his usual smug charm, buttoning up his jacket. “You’re figuring that out now. You’re gonna love your Christmas present.”

“I think I’ll hate it purely on principle,” May replies, following him to the door.

“Thank you for rescuing me today,” she tells him quietly, smoothing her hands over the lapels of his jacket. “Just—thank you.” 

She stands on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I still don’t like you very much,” she murmurs against his jaw.

“God, I love it when you whisper sweet nothings in my ear, honey,” Tony says with a sardonic grin. But there’s something soft between them now, a deeper understanding. Even May can admit that.

__________________________

 

A week before Christmas she finds an envelope addressed to her propped up on the kitchen table when she gets home from work. There’s a Christmas card inside and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes when she sees the picture printed on it—little Peter standing in front of the Christmas tree, wearing his Iron Man mask and PJs. There’s a simple handwritten note inside the card— _For P’s college fund. Take another day off every week. Merry X-mas, T.S._ —and a check. When she sees the amount of money the check has been written out for, her eyes nearly fall out of her head. She immediately sends the check back despite their agreement, only to come home the next day to another check on her table for twice the amount of the original and another note— _Send it back again. I’d be happy to triple it._

She keeps it, feeling angry and manipulated and almost shamefully thrilled all at once.

__________________________

 

They make it through the rest of the holidays in more or less one piece, and when May catastrophically wrecks Christmas dinner, the tears she sheds are the result of laughter rather than grief as she giggles helplessly with Peter while they use dish towels to waft plumes of black smoke out through the opened windows in the living room. They close out the end of the year and start a new one without any further incidents, and for a brief, tenuously happy few weeks, May feels almost normal and whole again.

And then the anniversary of Ben’s death arrives, all too quickly.

_Anniversary_ is the word used by the grief counselor she still sees from time to time. It sounds strange to her. Anniversaries should only refer to happy things, like birthdays and weddings and first dates. The word in this context reminds her instead of all the anniversaries she won’t be sharing with Ben. All the stolen years they won’t have together.

She’s already called Peter’s school and switched shifts at work so that they can stay home together. She’d thought about going in, hoping that work would keep her mind and her hands so busy that she wouldn’t have time to feel the weight of grief, but she could tell a week beforehand that Peter wouldn’t be able to handle school that day, and she can’t bear the thought of him alone at home with his own grief.

He stays out later in the days leading up to it, texting her to let her know he won’t make curfew. She doesn’t fight it, just texts him back to tell him to stay safe. He’s told her what happened that night when Ben died. She knows the guilt he carries despite all her efforts to assure him that none of it, _none of it_ , was his fault. She knows why he stays out later these nights, trying to save as many people as he can. A kind of atonement. It breaks her heart, knowing the burden he carries, another layer of grief on top of everything else.

She stops outside his bedroom door after he comes home and has fallen into an exhausted sleep. She can hear him grinding his teeth from where she stands in the hallway, full of turmoil even while he dreams. 

On the actual anniversary, Peter wakes with a crippling migraine, the culmination of a week of anxiety and sleep loss and nightly teeth grinding. Every little sound is a torture that sends him spiraling, and by the afternoon he is half-delirious with pain. May finds herself creeping around the darkened apartment in her stockinged feet, barely breathing for fear of worsening his agony. He repeatedly vomits the pain relievers and Coke she offers him, and when she does cry later that day—alone in the bathroom, pressing a towel to her mouth to stifle the sound of her sobs— it’s more from a feeling of total helplessness than actual grief.

They lie together in her bed like they used to when Peter was small and sick, the shades all pulled down. She curls up against Peter’s back and presses her head between his shoulder blades, listening to the sound of his heart beating and the shudder of his breaths. She counts the passing hours and wishes for the day to end, like once the clock strikes midnight a curse will be lifted and everything magically righted.

But midnight comes and goes without relief. It gets more hellish, instead.

Sometime around one in the morning a car alarm goes off on the street below the bedroom window. Peter reacts like he’s been electrocuted, leaping up and falling out of the bed, scrambling backwards across the floor until his back collides with the wall, and then he’s crawling up it, climbing until he is perched in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling.

May covers her mouth to keep from screaming in shock. She’s reluctantly watched some of the Spider-Man videos that are so popular on Youtube and seen her nephew clamber up the sides of buildings like he’s immune to gravity, but it’s one thing to watch a video on her laptop and another thing entirely to see it in person. Horror rises up through her gut and she can feel herself shaking. Peter is shaking, too, from where he sits curled against the ceiling, his arms wrapped around his head while the car alarm continues its undulating wailing. May knows she should get up and try to comfort him, but the whole thing has taken on a nightmarish quality and she flees the room instead, shutting the door behind her and stumbling down the hall and into the kitchen.

She sits on the cold vinyl floor near the fridge and sobs, totally overwhelmed. She knows that she needs to go back into the bedroom but she can’t bring herself to move, paralyzed by fear and grief and the sense of being utterly alone.

Her phone is in her hand and pressed to her ear before she is fully aware of it. She breathes into the short silence before the first ring, trying and failing to calm herself.

Tony answers on the second ring, and May is so grateful to hear his voice, alert and present despite the late hour, that she can barely get out a coherent explanation through her tears of both relief and fear. She knows she must sound hysterical, a total madwoman, but she’s picturing Peter climbing the wall and she’s consumed with panic.

Tony stays on the phone with her during the time it takes him to get to Queens, and by the time he taps at the door, May has managed to collect herself a bit. She feels even better when she opens it and sees him standing there, looking more put together than she could ever hope to in the skinny grey hours of the night.

He holds up a brown paper bag. “I come bearing gifts.”

She lets him in. He comes into the kitchen and sets the bag on the table, carefully opening it. 

“Noise cancelling headphones,” he murmurs, pulling them out of the bag. “And I’ve got an injectable pain reliever that should work with his particular…spidery chemistry.”

May just nods, comforted by his reassuring calmness and how he has arrived with tangible solutions.

“Is he still...?” Tony points towards the ceiling.

“I don’t…I’m not sure,” May admits, looking down at her hands twisting her robe into knots. She can’t look him in the eye. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t go back in by myself.”

“That’s alright,” Tony tells her. “I think it’s creepy as hell, too. I enforce a strict ‘no freaky wall climbing’ rule at my place.”

May gives a small, almost hysterical laugh, shaking her head as she swallows down her tears.

“C’mon,” Tony says, picking up the bag and handing it to her. “Hang on to this for me and I’ll handle the rest.”

May nods again and points down the hall. “He’s in my bedroom.”

She follows him down the hall and stands behind him as he carefully opens the door to the bedroom. She presses her sleeve against her mouth again as she peers over Tony’s shoulder into the dark room. Peter is still curled up against the ceiling, his arms clamped tight over his head, and May feels a painful rush of worry and shame.

“Pete,” Tony says, his voice pitched barely above a whisper. He walks over and stands under Peter’s huddled form, reaching up to shake him gently. “Hey, kid.”

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispers back, his voice small and confused sounding.

“The one and only.” Tony grasps him by the elbows. “You gotta come down now, alright? You’re making your aunt feel like she’s in a remake of _The Exorcist_.”

Peter lowers his arms from around his head. “I’m sorry,” he says brokenly.

“It’s okay, baby,” May says, finding her voice and coming into the room to stand beside Tony. “You just need to come down. Tony brought some medicine. You need to come down to take it.”

“Come on down, kid, that’s it. ‘Atta, boy. You’re gonna be alright,” Tony murmurs as Peter slowly comes unstuck and lets himself be pulled down into their arms. 

“I’ve got some real good shit that’s gonna get you high as a kite,” Tony continues, helping May guide Peter back to the bed. “You’re gonna take a nice long nap and feel like a million bucks when you wake up. How does that sound?”

“Okay,” Peter says weakly as they lay him on the bed. His hands go to his head again, rubbing and tugging at sweat-dampened curls, his expression locked in a grimace of pain. 

Tony leans over and pulls Peter’s hands away from his head and folds them over his chest. “You keep doing that and you’re gonna give yourself bald spots,” Tony tells him. “You’ll really look like a goofy little asshole then.”

Peter manages a brief, tense smile at that, but then he starts clutching fistfuls of his t-shirt instead. “It’s so loud,” he says shakily, gulping down air. 

May remembers the headphones in her hands and slips them over his ears. She strokes his hair and presses her hand gently against his eyelids, feeling him starting to relax a little, his hands unclenching. She feels some of the tension in her own body unwind.

“That’s better,” Tony murmurs approvingly while he fills a syringe with the medication he’s brought. May watches, alarmed by the amount he draws up.

Tony glances up at her and must notice her trepidation.

“Yeah, it makes me nervous, too,” he tells her, “because he’s such a little squirt and you feel like you’re tranquilizing a rabid grizzly bear or something with the amount you have to give him. But trust me, we’ve got all that pharmacological stuff worked out. Or trust my medical team, at least. They’ve run all the tests and know what they’re doing.”

“Are you…you’re not experimenting on my kid or something?” May asks, genuinely afraid. 

Tony’s eyes dart back to her. “Christ, May, no,” he says, and she knows that he’s telling the truth from the pained expression that flicks briefly across his face. “I would never…I’m just trying to be prepared for the worst. It’s sort of what I do.”

“You’ve had to do this to him before?” May asks, something clenching in her chest.

Tony hesitates a second, and she can tell he’s debating whether or not he should lie to her. 

“Yes,” he says finally. “Just a couple of times when he’s done something more stupidly self-sacrificing than usual.”

May presses her hands against her eyes. Takes a deep breath. Reminds herself that none of this is the end of the world. That this is just how things are now. When she lowers her hands Tony is looking at her, his expression soft and almost apologetic.

“Would you be more comfortable doing the honors? Seeing as you’re the one with the nursing degree,” he asks. He’s holding out the syringe to her.

She looks down at her shaking hands and then back up at him helplessly.

“Not a problem,” he says smoothly. “Here, you can look over my shoulder and judge my work.”

He grasps Peter’s arm and slides the needle under his skin. May can tell he’s done it before. She watches Tony slowly compress the plunger and feels almost dizzy.

“It’ll start working quickly,” Tony says. He puts the bottle back into the bag and sets in on the bedside table. “You can keep that, just in case. I’ve left instructions in the bag for dosages and what not.”

May nods, petting Peter’s arm until he finally, finally, relaxes enough to sleep. 

“Thank you,” she says quietly, once she and Tony leave Peter sleeping and are sitting together on the sofa in the living room. She rubs her hands together, still feeling the after effects of panic. “I’m sorry I called you out here in the middle of the night.”

Tony waves a dismissive hand. “I was up anyway.”

“Still...” May feels embarrassed now, like she can’t even handle her own shit. 

“Even if he managed to keep down the over-the-counter stuff you gave him, it wouldn’t have done any good,” Tony says, like he can read what she’s thinking. “You understand that, right? That stuff isn’t going to work now. That’s not your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have freaked out like that,” May says, swiping angrily at the tear rolling down her cheek with the heel of her hand. “He’s sick and hurting and I just left him alone in there. What kind of...what kind of mother does that to her kid?”

“How many mothers do you know with kids who can climb walls or hear your neighbors snoring four floors down?” Tony points out. “Not a damn thing is normal about this, May. You did exactly what you were supposed to do—call the guy who can help fix it. So don’t beat yourself up, alright? You’re still figuring this whole thing out. _We’re_ still figuring this whole thing out.”

She doesn’t really feel any better knowing that, but she nods anyway, sniffling into the sleeve of her robe.

“Here—I brought a little something for you, too,” Tony says, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out a little plastic bag. He dangles it in front of her, his eyebrows raised.

“Oh my god,” May says when she realizes what it is, a little laugh working its way out of her chest. “You didn’t…”

“I did,” Tony says, setting the bag of marijuana on the coffee table. “Medical grade, totally legal, so don’t get your knickers in a twist. I even brought a portable vaporizer so we’re slightly less likely to scandalize the neighbors with the smell.” 

“Oh my god,” May says again, covering her face. “Tony, I can’t…”

“Oh, come on,” Tony clucks his tongue. “We’re contemporaries. I know you’ve smoked a little weed before. It’ll help take the edge off. You’ve been under a lot of stress.”

He’s already setting up the vaporizer, and May can’t think of any argument to stop this before it continues.

“I haven’t smoked pot in decades,” she murmurs, thinking back across all those years. She had been a different person then, before Ben and Peter and mutation-inducing spider bites. 

“Well, you’ll love this,” Tony says cheerfully, offering her the vaporizer. “Lightyears better than that seedy twiggy shit you got from stoner Ron in the dorm bathroom and smoked out of an old beer can.”

She only hesitates a moment longer before accepting it. She takes a short little draw on it, then a longer one. He isn’t wrong. It is different, not like anything she remembers. They pass it back and forth a few times.

“Well?” Tony asks after a few minutes. “What do you think?”

“It’s certainly a lot more high tech these days,” May says, studying the vaporizer.

“I mean the product,” Tony replies, grinning.

May considers. “Tastes like burnt popcorn,” she decides, and Tony snorts.

“Good thing it’s not really the flavor we’re after,” he says.

They sit in silence for a long while, passing the vaporizer between themselves, and May can feel a calm, dreamlike quality settling over everything, her mind loosening from the aches and tension of her body. The worry is still there, the sense of grief and shame, but she feels like there is distance between it and herself now, like she can look at it objectively.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this while my teenager is right down the hall,” May says finally. “I’m always telling him to stay away from this stuff.”

“Let’s be real,” Tony says with a wry smile. “I think we’d both rather he do normal rebellious teenager things like smoke pot and have bad sex in the back of your car than the actual crazy shit he gets into.”

May can’t argue with that.

“Actually,” Tony says, rubbing a finger over his mustache as he muses, “maybe we should’ve invited him to join us. This is supposed to be good for migraines, you know.”

May swats his arm. “Absolutely not. You’ve just given him enough pain killers to put down an elephant. He doesn’t need anything else.”

“We could just blow a little in his face while he sleeps—”

“Tony!” May warns, but then she’s giggling, the coil of tension that had been wound so tightly in her chest loosening. She reaches for the vaporizer again. “So what do you use it for?” she asks. “You said it was legal. I’m assuming the prescription is yours.”

She passes the vaporizer back. Tony takes a long pull off it before answering. 

“Anxiety. Chronic pain. Stress.” He offers her a tight smile. “Hate to say it, but the whole superhero lifestyle isn’t exactly easy on your mental and physical health.” He holds up the vaporizer and gives it a little sardonic salute. “I spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing this new, highly technical therapeutic method for overcoming traumatic experiences. Didn’t help my insomnia half as well as this.”

“That sounds like you,” May says, sitting back against the cushions. “Trying to invent a way out of your problems.”

Tony huffs, his expression somewhere between bemused and chagrined. “Unsuccessfully.”

She shrugs. “Maybe you’re not supposed to get over some things.”

She falls quiet, her thoughts drifting and chasing each other away before she can quite grasp them. Then she says, “He grinds his teeth.”

“What?”

“Peter. He grinds his teeth when he’s stressed. It’s why he gets—” she waves a hand around her head—“migraines. It used to happen because of normal things, you know, a big test or some kid picking on him at school, but now…”

She stops, thinking about the night Ben died, how Peter had apologized to her over and over again, like he could have done anything to stop it. She understands now that it goes deeper.

“He’s sixteen,” she says. “He shouldn’t feel like he has to save the world. I don’t even know what to say to him anymore, to make him feel alright.”

She looks down at her hands, feeling the weight on Tony’s gaze on her. 

“I’m not an expert or anything, but seems to me like you’re doing a good job,” he says.

She laughs, shaking her head. “I try, god, I try, but it’s so hard.” She takes another steadying breath. “Do you and Pepper ever talk about it? Having kids, I mean.” She shakes her head again, pressing the tips of her fingers to her forehead. “Sorry, I shouldn’t ask.”

“It’s alright,” Tony says, blowing out a thin stream of vapor. “And no, it’s not something we’ve talked about. Not seriously, at least. We’ve got a lot of other issues to work out first. I’m not sure I’m really cut out for the job, anyway.”

“You do alright with Peter,” May says, and despite everything she realizes she means it. 

“That might be the most shockingly nice thing you’ve ever said to me,” Tony says with a smile. “I should get you stoned more often.”

May rolls her eyes but returns the smile. “God, you just don’t know when to shut up, do you,” she says. “I’m being serious, here. Sometimes I don’t know what I would do, if you weren’t around,” she confesses. “All of this shit—it scares the hell outta me. You’re the only person I can talk to about it.”

“May,” Tony says, and then he stops. There’s an expression on his face that May can’t quite read, something raw and tender.

“Ben and I, we talked about having children, but the timing was never right,” she says quietly, not even sure why she’s telling him any of this, except that once she starts speaking it’s like a release valve opening, everything she’s been holding in pouring out in a torrent. “He was going back to school for another degree and I was working double shifts every day to make ends meet. So it was always a ‘someday’ thing, you know? And then one day, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. We woke up and went to work like any other day, and then by dinner time we had this kid.”

She swallows hard, her eyes blurring with tears. “I didn’t love him at first,” she confesses in a hushed voice, feeling the ache of that long-carried, secret shame. She’s never told anyone that. Not Ben, not her friends, not her therapist. “Not, you know, the way a woman should love her child. I was so angry, and I was scared. I felt like I wasn’t ready to handle it, that I was going to fuck it all up. I felt that way for a long time, even after things settled down. I mean, I cared about him, of course, but he didn’t feel like...like he was _mine_.”

She wipes the wetness from her cheeks and takes a shaky breath. “And then one day I was watching him, and I can’t even remember what he was doing, but I was watching him and I just had this—this epiphany, like, _oh my god_ , this is _my_ kid, and I would do anything for him—I would _die_ for him. I would _kill_ for him if I had to. And I know it sounds ridiculous but I swear, it was that sudden. It was just like that—” she snaps her fingers. “Like a switch had gone off or something.”

“I don’t think it’s ridiculous,” Tony says quietly. 

“Good,” May says, gathering herself together and looking him straight in the eye. “Because I want you know that I’m trusting you with my whole world. Everything I have left is in that bedroom there. You understand that, right?”

“I understand,” Tony says, looking right back at her, and she believes him.

“Are you _really_ sure you want that responsibility?” she asks.

“It’s a little late for that now, right?” Tony says. “If you’d asked me that a year or so ago I wouldn’t have had a fucking clue what I was getting into. But then, somewhere along the line...It’s like you said—” he snaps his fingers. “Like a goddamn switch going off.” He looks at her, soft and serious. “I can’t promise you that he won’t ever get hurt, but you can be sure I’ll do my damnedest to keep him safe. I think the world of that kid, May. You know that.”

“I know,” May murmurs, covering her eyes a moment before giving him a teary-eyed smile. “Of course I know.” She reaches over and tugs at his goatee. “Your beard has gotten so much grayer since the first time I met you. That’s what having kids in your life does to you—gray hair and wrinkles and bags under your eyes. Only it’s even worse with Peter. I swear I’ve aged ten years in the last six months alone.”

Tony snorts and runs a hand through his hair. “God, you’re not wrong about that. He’s killing me.” He smiles then and nudges her with his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure we had an incredible, profoundly moving, drug-induced bonding moment just now. So we’re officially friends, right?”

May gives him a skeptical look. “Don’t hold your breath.”

“It’s gonna happen, May,” Tony says with supreme confidence. “I don’t know why you keep fighting it. We’re gonna be besties, just you wait. We’re gonna grow old together. Take bong rips in our dentures.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” May says, shaking her head and laughing again.

__________________

 

When May wakes in her bed to the late morning sun, she feels more rested then she has in a long time despite everything that happened the night before. She wanders out of the bedroom to find Peter awake and curled up on the sofa under an afghan watching TV. He looks pale and his eyes are red-rimmed, but he manages a wan smile when she comes in.

“How’re you feeling, honey?” she asks, carding her fingers through his hair.

“A little rough, but okay,” he says. He leans forward and presses his face against her stomach. “I think I scared you last night,” he mumbles into her robe. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you apologize to me anymore,” May says firmly. “I don’t wanna hear it. You understand me? You have nothing to apologize for, and I want you to stop.”

He nods, wrapping his arms around her in a hug. He looks up after a moment, frowning. “Why does your robe smell like pot?”

“The neighbors were probably smoking last night,” May says dismissively. “You feel like you can eat something?”

“Sure.”

She throws some pancakes together and manages not to burn them too badly. She brings two plates out and she sits down beside Peter, burying her bare feet under his warm body. They balance the plates on their knees and watch some house hunting show featuring attractive young couples with ludicrous budgets. The whole thing feels so quiet and normal, like last night was just a bad dream. Like Spider-Man is just a bad dream. Like Ben will walk through the door any minute now, looking exhausted from working another third shift and making some joke about them sitting around like royalty in their pajamas while he works himself to the bone. 

But that’s the true dream, and this is real.

“Come here,” she says, motioning to Peter. “Come here and snuggle with me. You’re not too old for that yet, are you?”

Peter smiles at her. “Probably.”

“So humor your old aunt, alright? Come on, bug. It’s freezing in here and I wanna cuddle.”

Peter sets his plate on the coffee table and crawls over to her. She wraps her arms around him and squeezes him tight.

“I love you,” she tells him, “I’ll always love you.” And she has to hope that that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](https://groo-ock.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Earthquake, A Blizzard and A Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17454689) by [Reshma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reshma/pseuds/Reshma)




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